Held for 12 days from April 24 – May 5 in six locations and the central Tribeca Festival Hub on Varick Street, the 2019 festival attracted more than 146,000 people. The fest featured 618 screenings and talks as well as the Virtual Arcade, the Tribeca Cinema 360, Tribeca TV and other special selections. The program presented 111 features, 53 shorts, 33 immersive story telling projects and 21 N.O.W., New Online Work, from 44 countries.  The films were selected from 9,304 submissions of which 3,308 were features and 5,131 shorts. As a point of reference, Sundance received 13,300 submissions this year.  Selections for the film programs of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, now called Film at Lincoln Center, and of the Museum of Modern are not based on submissions but chosen by members of their selection committees from the numerous national and international film festivals they attend, amounting to more than a thousand films they see each year.  Tribeca shows only premieres, with the largest percentage consisting of world premieres. 88 of the 111 feature films were world premieres, as well as 31 of the 63 shorts, 26 of the 33 immersive films, 12 of the 15 TV productions and 16 of the 19 Tribeca N.O.W.  films. Selected feature films came from 32 countries. The majority were produced in the USA, where 89 of the films originated. The UK provided 17, Germany 8, China 4, France 4, and Australia 3 respectively.

With 146,000 individuals attending one or more of the large number of Tribeca Film Festival screenings, events, the Tribeca television festival and media encounters Tribeca Enterprises, and its subsidiaries arranged throughout the year, Tribeca has become the most prolific and popular film and television festival in the New York metropolitan area.  Tribeca’s success can be attributed to its continuing innovation, the multipronged programming philosophy, superb festival organization, and their excellent responsiveness to film makers.  Since its founding in 2001 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, with the intention of revitalizing lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center attacks, the festival has introduced new components every year while maintaining its emphasis on the overriding importance of storytelling.  

The Disruptive Innovation Award, established ten years ago, honors individuals who have stepped outside of traditional thinking to generate impactful innovations in all field. The Virtual Arcade is Tribeca’s immersive demonstration of cutting-edge technologies and storytelling with compelling international XR projects. This year, Tribeca X, which centers on the link between advertising and storytelling in branded entertainment expanded to honor the best artist and brand collaborations in feature and short film, episodics and VR.  Also newly created was Tribeca Critics Week. Four established film critics placed five outstanding productions into the program which had not received any major swards at other festivals.  They selected from Berlin, Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival, American Factory, In Fabric, The Weekend, Driveways, and This is not Berlin. Topically themed was the day long Tribeca Celebrates Pride for the 50^th anniversary of Stonewall.  Another innovation is the rebranding of the VIP program, introducing the Z Pass ranging from $6,000 to $25,000. In 2018 $565,000 was raised through VIP pass a key funding source for the Tribeca non-profit Film Institute.  A VIP pass for the 2018 New York Film Festival was priced up to $20,000. The principal presenting partner for the Tribeca Film Festival is AT&T. Signature partners included the Alfred Sloan Foundation, bai, Bloomberg Philanthropies and 13 others.

It is noteworthy that in changing the name to Film at Lincoln Center, its management is trying to make the film programs offered more appealing and broaden the audience base.  They hope to remove the preconception that the programming is elitist and only attractive to older upscale cinephile viewers.

Tribeca is drawing a younger audience and has never been labeled elitist, having earned a well-deserved reputation for selecting superb documentaries. It has been better tuned a generation accustomed to Netflix generation, a screening service set up in 1995. In the early years, Tribeca’s ties to the industry and its broad-based programming approach resulted in some envy and getting the “too commercial” sticker. But for those who had been covering New York film festivals, Tribeca appeared to be more open and transparent than the Film Society of Lincoln Center after Richard Pena’s departure.

There were many outstanding productions this year. Below is a small sample of what appealed to me most

Our Time Machine, Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang, 2019, China.     

This film is characterized by the unique conceptual framework guiding it and the startling, mind bending execution of the guiding idea. Maleonn, a leading Chinese artist, develops a theater project “Papa’s Time Machine” with human-sized puppets transfigure his memories of his father Ma Ke who is, suffering from progressing Alzheimer. Ma Ke, former director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera Theater lost his job during the Cultural Revolution and withdrew into theatre. Maleonn wants to honor the father but struggles for financial success with his complex time and labor-intensive homage. He succeeds in completing and staging his ambitious project with support from the Tribeca Film Institute and received the award for best Cinematography in a Documentary Film.  

17 Blocks, Davy Rothbart, 2019, USA.     

The title of the production refers to the distance between the neighborhood where the Sanford family lives in Washington DC and the U.S. Capitol. The film is a record of over twenty years and includes home movies made by Emmanuel Sanford from the age of 9 on with a video camera provided by Rothbart. As a large, extended and complex family, the Sanfords are at the center of the film. Initially confusing for the viewers, this mind provoking portrait of urban Afro Americans living as an underprivileged poor family depicts life with drugs, existence in a violent surrounding, murder, and the frequent failing attempts to escape from the traps individuals were born into.  17 Blocks is an assemblage of many pieces of footage collected over 20 years and an extraordinary achievement by Jennifer Tixiera, the editor, who was honored with the award for best editing in a documentary film. She also served as the screenwriter. The film was dedicated to the Washington DC homicide victims of the last decade.

Slay the Dragon, Barak Goodman, and Chris Durrance, 2019, USA   

This film is topical and most relevant as an empirical documentation of the attempt to dismantle the electoral basis of the United States democracy through sophisticated high-tech data applications in the gerrymandering process.  After the 2008 election well-funded Republican corporate initiatives focused on key swing states to control the redistricting process and achieved successful results in the 2018 races. Combined with disenfranchising of voters from African and Latin American groups, the conservative swing of the judicial system and the impact of the citizenship question on the next census, the US democratic system is corroding and often become a charade. In most cases, the legal system cannot provide relief and judges tend to vote along party lines as shown by recent decisions of the US Supreme Court.  But as SLAY THE DRAGON shows, there is some hope. A Michigan citizens’ initiative succeeded in getting on the ballot a measure that would replace the customary party run legislative committees by an independent group to redraw the lines. Evidently if passed, the opponents will contest it in court.

American Factory, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, 2019, USA. 

This documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected for the new Tribeca Critics’ Week. It was picked up by Netflix at Sundance.  Over three years Bognar and Reichert tracked the establishment by the Chinese corporation Fuyao Glass of a glass making facility in an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio. The new plant employs hundreds of Chinese workers and 2,000 Americans using heavy state and local subsidies while fighting any union attempts to organize the workers.  Both in Ohio and at the Fuyao Chinese headquarters the filmmakers had full access to the workers and the plant and were able to provide a fascinating and instructive inventory of the contrast between Chinese and American management and labor. The initial optimism of the American workers cooled soon given the Chinse top-down management approach, the expectation to work long hours without getting proper compensation, the arrogance of the Chinese supervisors towards their American subordinates and the clear-cut cultural differences. Failure to generate profits resulted in more pressure on the American workers and Fuyao Glass spent more than $800,000 to fight the attempt to create a union and fired its activists.  The American workers voted against a union.   Chairman Cao Dewang of Fuyao Glass, a multi billionaire made it clear car that he would shut down the factory if there is a union in his plant. The workers had no options because there were no other jobs are in that Ohio area.

LEFTOVER WOMEN, Shos Shlam and Hilla Mealia, 2019, Israel, Germany. 

Sheng Nu is a derogatory term used in China for Leftover Woman who are of marriageable age but have failed to find a husband. They are part of a growing number of about 30 million women, a consequence of the official one- child policy in Chinar which created a gender imbalance of not having enough women. This condition threatens the traditional view of the male heading a family and generates tremendous pressure on single educated women by their families and the dominant social norms. Co-produced by ZDF Arte and yes Docu the documentary is an impressive ethnographic portrait of three women in the 34 – 36 age range; a lawyer, a radio talk show host and an assistant professor.  We follow their frustrating attempts to create a life outside of work, use of strategies to find a man without sacrificing their careers, as well as coping with parental rejection and dominant males espousing traditional values. Prospects for these women appear to be narrow; when the lawyer inquires if she can have her eggs frozen she is advised that there are only sperm banks in China. She decides to leave the country for France, the talk show host continues to live with her oppressive mother who tells her that she is not yet at the age of 28 a leftover woman and the only one who gets married admits that her marriage is boring.

Claus Mueller    filmexchange@gmail.com